So I have created my site. I like it, I am happy with it, it works, now the hardest part comes. I need to find people who are interested in it and try and get some traffic. I have tried the following things:

Putting my link in signatures of emails, postes
Submitted my site to search engines
Made some business cards

But I have 2 questions.

#1. Because my site is a forum, what kinds of things can I do to increase traffic and awareness without spending tons of $$. I am willing to spend some, but how do forums become popular? For example this one. How did it start? What was done to promote it? Or any popular forum for that matter.

#2. How long does it take to become known? I understand that people arn't going to flood your site all at once, but how long should I wait for success? 1 Year? 2? What is a good goal to have?

Thanks for the help! I really appreciate it!

Vapor

googleit

09-20-2006, 07:57 PM

you could always use google or yahoo?

ttttt

09-20-2006, 07:58 PM

One trick for all sites is to register RSS feeds with feed search engines.

Vapor

09-21-2006, 05:37 AM

what are RSS feeds?

ttttt

09-21-2006, 02:25 PM

what are RSS feeds?
Well,
Unfortunately, you are running a phpbb forum, which doesn't actually have rss built in.
But,
Have a look here:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/help/rss/default.stm
Or google What are rss feeds?

ronaldb66

09-21-2006, 04:01 PM

It's a bit of a chicken-egg-conundrum: like CF, forums become popular because of the quality of the content (from the users' perspective), and that content is provided by it's users. So for a forum to attract users, it first has to have a decent user base to create the content... in short: it requires time, and growth will be slow at first.

ttttt

09-21-2006, 04:05 PM

It's a bit of a chicken-egg-conundrum: like CF, forums become popular because of the quality of the content (from the users' perspective), and that content is provided by it's users. So for a forum to attract users, it first has to have a decent user base to create the content... in short: it requires time, and growth will be slow at first.
You said it.
I know someone who has a forum with 20 members and has been running for 4 years.

Vapor

09-24-2006, 10:44 PM

Awe man,

I don't want to hear that! :) I am trying to make sure I have all my bases covered by doing a wide selection of advertising... Search Engines, Signatures, Google Adword... It's still a slow process.

What is a good goal to have in one year?

ttttt

09-25-2006, 08:51 PM

Just so you know, I don't think google adwords adds to your pagerank.
I think that 500 posts would be a good target for one year. But remember, the more your forums grows, the faster it will grow e.g. 500 members making, on average (in total) 15 posts per day, then those posts make your forum grow and attract more users. Therefore if you have 1000 members, on the same ratio, you'll have 30 posts per day, and your site will grow at double the speed, and attract double the amount of new users. It's a bit like the inversa square law I suppose...